INTERNATIONAL WRAP: Boks are in a league of their own

We are only one week into the official northern hemisphere international season or Quilter Autumn Series but already what was apparent during the southern hemisphere season is becoming apparent again - the world champion Springboks are in a league of their own.

There is one more hurdle to come in the form of the Irish, and the Boks owe Andy Farrell’s team one after some persistent heartbreak in Dublin over the past decade and a bit.

And you can bet your life savings that coach Rassie Erasmus will be telling us this week that Italy must be taken seriously in the next game in Turin on Saturday.

Which of course they do, because Italy have just beaten Australia for the second time and we mustn’t forget either that many of their first choice players weren’t in the squad that came to South Africa earlier this year.

Although they emphatically put the record straight in Gqeberha a week later, the Boks won’t have forgotten the second-half wakeup call they were given at Loftus in the first official test match of the year, particularly at forward.

The Boks play Italy on Saturday (15 November) and Ireland a week later (22 November) and then round off the tour and their year against Wales in Cardiff on 29 November. After watching Argentina destroy Wales on Sunday in Steve Tandy's first game as Wales coach, there's not much doubt about who will win when they face the world champions.

MAIN MISSION ACHIEVED

The Boks’ main mission of the year has already been achieved - by beating France in Paris this past weekend the world and southern hemisphere champions saw off the kings of the northern hemisphere and the team that is undeniably the main challenger to their quest to complete a hattrick of Rugby World Cup titles in Australia two years from now.

It wasn’t easy, it was never going to be, as after all France don’t lose often at Stade de France these days. Before Saturday they had lost only one game in the last 15 at the venue, and that was the 2023 World Cup quarterfinal defeat to the Boks.

The Boks extended their record over France since 2010 to nine wins in 10 games, the only defeat being the narrow loss to Marseille in 2022 when Pieter-Steph du Toit was sent off in the early minutes.

This time it was Lood de Jager who was sent off, quite a bit later than Du Toit was at the Stade de Velodrome, but still with just over half the game to go. That the Boks did the job in the second half, effectively scoring 19 points to 3, with only 14 men on the field is testament to how good they’ve become.

And that word, ‘become’, is the operative word there, for the Boks have improved markedly since they won the last World Cup in France, and while two successive Rugby Championship crowns tells its own story, they are probably better from a statistics viewpoint, and further ahead of their opponents, than their win/loss record for the season suggests.

INTERESTING TO KNOW WHAT SCHMIDT THINKS NOW

They lost twice last year, once to Ireland in Durban and then to Argentina, and twice this year so far, to New Zealand in the other seismic clash of the year in Auckland and to Australia in Johannesburg. So if somehow Ireland did pip them in Dublin in just under a fortnight, there’d be an argument for this year having been inferior to last.

But that isn’t the case if you are measuring the growth of the Bok game. And in this regard, the words of Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt at the end of the South African leg of his team’s Championship campaign stick in the memory.

Although his team had confounded the critics by winning at Ellis Park, he felt the first 20 minutes of the first half of that game was the best window of rugby he’d ever seen from the Boks.

It would be interesting to hear Schmidt’s view now, assuming he watched the second half of the Boks’ record win over New Zealand in Wellington, the second half of their Durban annihilation of Argentina, and of course the second half, but particularly the last quarter, of their come from behind win over France.

The phrase ‘second half’ features there three times. In all the big wins, the Boks have been either trailing at halftime or it has been a close game. Imagine what is going to happen when they are word perfect and clinical from the off.

The only big team they were imperious against from the start was the Aussies in August - and they ended up losing the game.

BIG MEN OPERATE WITH PACE

Of course, the Boks outlasting France was probably the plan. Lightning can strike twice if it is part of a repeat plan, and it shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence that the two games played against France two years apart were so similar.

The Boks struggled to stay in the game in the quarterfinal in October 2023 in the first half, and that was the case again.

But in both instances it was the French, and particularly their forwards, who looked completely out on their feet towards the end. In 2023 we remember Handre Pollard’s match winning penalty, but there was also Eben Etzebeth’s second-half try.

France scored 22 points in the first half of that game, and just six in the second half. After halftime in the most recent game, France managed just 3. This time the Boks buried them with a flurry of three tries.

The Boks have big men in the forwards but they also operate at pace, and the tempo of the South African game has increased immeasurably. The effort put into conditioning is paying off.

There were times towards the end of the 32-17 win in Paris that the forwards were dominant just because their opponents hadn’t pitched at the point of contact and weren’t able to find their shape to resist the drive.

FORMER LIONS LEGEND IS IMPRESSED

Before the Paris game, there was an interesting column written by former British and Irish Lions and Wales captain Sam Warburton. The former world class flanker hasn’t always given the impression he has been that much of an admirer of the Boks, but he is now, and he wasn’t shy to acknowledge that the Boks were far out in front in world rugby. He seemed hopeful of a France win, but didn’t seem convinced.

He said that it was “obvious that the Boks have evolved their game”, although he hadn’t seen anything wrong with the power game that won them the 2019 and 2023 World Cups. He was interested during the Championship season to see how much more the Boks played off turnover ball, “looking for space first rather than the box kick, and how their number of offloads have just gone through the roof”.

He pointed to SA’s 48 offloads to New Zealand’s 33 offloads and their 48 clean breaks across the season to second placed New Zealand’s 25 as evidence of both the change he referred to as well as the Boks’ growing superiority.

Then of course there are the forward based stats related to first phase that may have creaked a bit in the first half of the Championship (lineouts) but which were back to their best and, in the scrums, their most destructive by the end of it.

By contrast, some of the other teams, such as Australia in particular, appear to have regressed. Since scaling the heights with their win in Johannesburg, the Wallabies have regressed to the point that all the talk of their revival in mid-year, after the win over the Boks and the closely fought Lions tour, just appears to be hubris.

The All Blacks won well against Ireland two games ago but looked vulnerable again against Scotland and it is maybe a measure of how much the former invincible double RWC champions have slipped that they are now celebrating narrow wins over the Scots like they used to against much bigger teams.

The litmus test for the Kiwis will be Saturday’s game in London against a rapidly improving England, and likewise the other way around. That will be the big game on Saturday, but unlike the one in Paris it won’t be about deciding who is the world’s best team. That was decided two nights ago.

Weekend international results

Ireland 41 Japan 10

Italy 26 Australia 19

England 38 Fiji 18

Scotland 17 New Zealand 25

France 17 South Africa 32

Wales 28 Argentina 52